Sincerely Some Loser
by skwirelygurli
Summary: Austin travels back in time to change his fate. Auslly.


**Sincerely Some Loser, an Austin and Ally oneshot**

**I do not own Austin and Ally. This is for VioletFier.**

He feeds the dollar into the vending machine, and it rejects it. There's a crease. Smoothing it on his pants should solve the problem.

The bill rips in half.

That was his last dollar. Well, his last valid dollar, because the others in his wallet haven't been printed yet.

He knew he should have looked more into this time travel stuff.

Things worthy of note:

At age thirty five, Austin Moon has retired from performing. As of current, he is a mentor for the artists at his old record label.

As of current, they think he's vacationing in a Swiss chalet. They don't know what's really going on.

Not even Ally. Not that she'd care, too busy with her her husband Walter and their daughter. They've been happily married for five years now, and nothing depresses him further than seeing the two of them happy together. That could have been him. But it wasn't.

He's here, arguing with a vending machine, with one ripped dollar and a credit card that won't be valid for another thirty five years.

A noise sounds over the intercom, and he knows that it's happened. Baby Ally has entered the world.

First rule of time travel: Do not mess with the course of events.

That doesn't mean he can't play voyeur. There's one thing he has to do before he leaves.

The birth certificate is drawn up, and he sees it.

So that's her middle name.

There's one more thing he shouldn't do, but he does anyway. He drops a sheet of music near the door, walks back to his time car.

His time has passed here.

(_the time jumps here)_

He parks at the end of the lot, stringing the key around his neck, down his shirt. Pulling at the elastic of his shorts, he puts his headphones on. Two kids walk by, point and laugh.

"Geez old man, headphones big enough?" They pop their earbuds back in, turning up their first edition iPods.

Where he comes from, these things are standard issue. Noise canceling, great bass.

He unlocks the car. Back in go the headphones.

Once he reaches the edge of the park, he breaks into a run. He's about to break rule one.

As long as he doesn't break rule number two: No revealing your true identity.

There, sobbing on the bench is a young Ally, right on schedule. She confessed to him one lonely night, before Walter came into the picture, that she had felt so lost that day. That Trish had been away, and she'd wept on the bench, having run off from home. Some kind stranger had sat down next to her, calmed her down. No more details were given.

He wanted to be that stranger. Maybe he was. He doesn't know.

He's going to risk it anyhow.

"Are you alright?" He sits next to her, offering a tissue.

She sniffles, nods her head.

"You sure don't look alright." The tissue is still dangling from his hand. "I want to help."

She looks up from her knees. "Why?"

"Because I'm feeling pretty terrible too, and if I can't help myself, the I should help you. No use in us both being miserable." He gives a slight smile when she takes the tissue from him.

"Why are you upset?" Sniffle, sniffle, blow.

He might as well tell her. In twenty plus years, she won't remember his story, just that he told it. That's how life works. It all occurs, but the details fade like a black t-shirt. It's still the same shirt, but it doesn't look the same. It's just some worn, old thing that'll get replaced, until only scraps remain.

Still, he can't break rule two.

"When I was younger, I met this really pretty girl. And I fell deep. Like really deep."

"How deep?"

"Like Grand Canyon deep."

"But the deepest part is 6,000 feet." Of course she would know the number. She's Ally.

He chuckles. "She was a really special girl. Still is actually. We're best friends."

"Then why are you sad?"

He runs a hand through his sweaty hair, wiping it off on his leg.

They share a beat of silence.

Then, "She married the wrong guy. I chickened out from telling her how I really felt, and he won her heart. He's really nice to her, and I feel like a jerk for wanting them to get divorced so I can have her for myself."

Especially when they have a kid, and he can see right now, clear as day (though it is getting a bit cloudy out) that children of divorce do not have it easy.

"My parents are getting a divorce." She crumples the tissue into a ball. "But it's not because they found someone else. They just fell out of love. Maybe one day your friend will fall out of love."

"Maybe one day, your parents will fall in love."

"You think so?"

"Anything's possible."

For the first time in a long time, he believes it.

(_the time jumps here)_

He buries himself in a crowd of faces, taking a spot in the back. The words he's singing at that piano, how could he have been so naïve? It is so a love song.

Dallas comes up next to Ally and smiles. His stomach twists.

He jumps around the year for a few days, watching himself grow. Seeing all the signs that made it so obvious that they were meant to be.

The face of his younger self nears hers, and it takes a great amount of willpower for him not to push their faces together. Fate has to take its course.

No matter how much it hurts.

_(the time jumps here)_

Before Walter, there had been another guy. A few, ones that she had met through her career. There was the model, and the accountant. He had lasted for a long while, having asked her out to dinner after doing her taxes. He liked to indulge her inner nerd.

And then he grew jealous. Austin should go back and fix that, let him know that he wasn't trying to steal his girlfriend. She was his partner, and there was no way he could not spend every day with her, seeing as how they were headlining a tour together. Then she'd have never gone out with the royal jerkwad, who would have never broken her heart with Mistress Double D.

Then she would have never taken that trip to New York, and she would never have met Walter on the plane ride home. And then he would just have to beat out the boring accountant.

The opportunity was like putty in his hand. All he had to do was mold it.

When the cheater broke up with her, Austin had been there to comfort her. He'd held her hand, wiped her tears, binged on ice cream.

He kissed her. Just a peck on the lips, to silence her murmurings.

"No, no, shhh. You're beautiful."

Austin orders a pina colada as he watches his younger self backtrack.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

"It's okay." Her voice quivers. At the time, he had thought it was because she was still upset over her ex. Chewing on his straw, he realizes how wrong he was. She wasn't upset that she was single.

She was upset that he took it back. The way her head moved toward his as he pulled away, her eyes widening.

He had squashed the metaphorical putty.

So at some point, she had liked him. In a more than friends way, even though they had both agreed not to date each other.

Are those butterflies, or is there something wrong with his drink?

Not his drink, but definitely his life.

It's time he fixes this.

_(the time jumps here)_

He goes back to right before when Walter first came into the picture. At the time he had been a diner employee, so he shows up for lunch and orders a plate of cheese fries.

He slides a napkin across the table with his food. There's a phone number on it.

"Whoops." The napkin is switched with a clean one, and he crumples the other in a ball. Glance back at a girl. Back to Austin.

"You're not going to call her?"

"She's not really my type."

"You like blondes?"

"Yeah, but that's not it. Too much wind between the ears, if you catch my drift." His hand motions forward, as if he's throwing the drift. Can a drift be thrown?

Austin picks up a steaming fry. He recognizes the girl from his world history class. It's been years, but she looked similar to Ally, and for weeks he had tried to transfer his feelings to her until he found out that she got a nose job for her birthday. He wasn't into fake girls.

"You know, you look familiar." Walter stuffs the napkin in the pocket of his apron. "What's your name?"

He sets the fry down. His cover can't be blown.

"Uh, Bob. Bob Salt." He stops himself from smacking his forehead. Of all names to pick, he picks the most blatantly fake one.

He should stop playing with the salt shaker.

_(the time jumps here)_

He knows it's wrong to break the first rule again.

He's going to do it anyway.

Digging around in his bag, he finds the backstage pass he brought with him. He's been collecting them with his memories.

"Austin Moon!" He startles the star, setting his hand on his shoulder.

Shivers course through his body.

"What up?" He takes the pen out from behind his ear, thinking that he wants him to sign something, like the paper that he has outstretched toward him.

"This is for you."

"What is it?" He slips his thumb under the flap.

His older self stops him. "Not here. You can't let Ally see it."

"Why not?" Austin asks the empty space in front of him, not seeing the the mysterious stranger leave. He can see the retreating body, shaking as it walks away.

It's probably nothing. Just a request for money, or a love letter from his daughter.

Certainly not a note that could change his fate.

Not if he never reads it.

_(the page breaks here)_

Today is the day. He travels forward to the night before their wedding. Austin enters his bedroom, sees the envelope lying on his pillow.

Navigating around the still packed moving boxes, he picks it up.

"What's this?" He takes the letter and unfolds it.

_Dear Austin,_

_Don't give up hope. _

_Sincerely some loser that knows if you don't man up, Ally is going to marry Walter and have a beautiful baby girl while you wallow in a pit of regret._

He scratches his head. He could have sworn he recycled all of the fanmail. And how did this guy know about her fiance? Nobody knew about him, for the sake of their privacy.

He tries to remember what the author looked like. About his height, with his hair color, and his eye- no. There is no way he met his future self. Time travel is just a thing in movies, right?

Right?

He needs fresh air. He ties his running shoes and goes out.

"You can't run from your problems!"

"Who are you?" He pulls his headphones down around his neck, coming to the bench where his future self is sitting, watching Ally and Walter talk by the fountain.

"Bob Salt," he says with confidence.

Austin raises an eyebrow. "I read your letter."

He sits down.

At the touch of an elbow, a shiver passes through them.

"You need to tell her how you feel, before it's too late." They both watch Walter sweep her into his arms, kiss her.

They both cringe.

"She chose him." He sighs in the direction of the moon.

"So change her mind."

_(the time jumps here)_

He snags a seat in the back. The best man is missing.

"We can't start without Austin." Ally shakes her head.

"Do you know how hard it was to book this place? We can't wait any longer." Walter turns to the priest. "Go ahead and start."

The priest turns to her, and she bites her lip. "Give me five minutes."

She exits the room, a ripple of tingles passing through his body.

A minute passes, and it intensifies.

Then he's gone.

_(the time jumps here)_

He takes the note out of its envelope, rereads it.

_Don't give up hope._

What if it was him, from some alternate future universe? What if he hadn't told him to make a move, and she had married that guy, and that baby crying in the other room wasn't his?

He shoves the note away, goes to check on his girls.

"That's a beautiful song."

"My mom used to sing it to me when I was a baby. Said she found the sheet music on the hospital floor. Can you believe that?" Rocking back, she sings softly into the baby's ear.

"Weird."

Some day he'll find that it was him all along. Or maybe not. If he's on a new path now, then his future self ceased to exist. Which means that he never went back in time to play matchmaker, which means that they shouldn't be together. So it couldn't have been him. Unless there's some sort of alternate universe of time for all the could of beens.

He doesn't know how he got here. Nor does he know what the future holds.

All he knows is that he loves her, and for now, that's enough.

For now and forever.


End file.
